Calendar Is All Wet -- Showers Start Summer

June 4, 1986|By Bob Morris of the Sentinel Staff

Season's greetings: Sure, June 21 is the official start of summer, but the season actually began on Monday, June 2, at approximately 3 p.m. That's when the sky cracked open and blessed us with the first real, honest-to- goodness gutter-washer of the year. We're talking world-class thunderstorm here. Live oaks and power lines bit the dust, or mud that is. Forget mere sheets of rain. There were bedspreads and blankets of it. And lightning? There was lightning enough to make even a skeptic consider settling all debts with the deities to avoid such awful vengeance.

Florida's summer truly begins in the wake of such a storm. It purges any lingering hint of spring. Talk about the Greenhouse Effect. Breathing becomes an exercise in aerobics. And benedictions are said to Dr. John Gorrie, patron saint of humidity haters and inventor of the air conditioner. You bet he was a Floridian.

After the first thunderstorm of summer, I was walking through College Park and saw a boy (he was 10 maybe and wearing surfer trunks with pineapples on them) standing on the corner of Westmoreland and Audubon. A mud puddle lapped at the curb. A car sped by, hit the puddle and soaked the boy. He didn't move. He just smiled. And he kept standing right beside that puddle as other cars sped through it. Yeah, it's summer.

Betcha: Here's $10 and undying respect to any local TV weatherman who can make it between now and October without using the following words and phrases: liquid sunshine, the wet stuff, thunder-boomer, hail the size of golf balls, raining cats and dogs, good day for ducks, hard enough to drown a frog or any other cutesy euphemism to describe a thunderstorm. Hmmm. Did I use the cutesy euphemism ''gutter-washer'' just a few lines ago? Sorry, I take it back.

Name game: It has come to the attention of Column World, through the most recent issue of Orlando Magazine, that there's a movement afoot to hang yet another needless moniker on the area. This time it's Magic Triangle and it's being promoted to describe the Orlando-Kennedy Space Center-Melbourne region as a center for the high-tech/aerospace industry. Never mind that the high- tech/aerospace industry is based on science, not magic. Apparently, U.S. Rep. Bill Nelson, D-Melbourne, favors the idea, as do several Orange and Brevard business leaders. Gushes Orlando Magazine editor-publisher Edward L. Prizer on the prospects of widespread recognition of the Magic Triangle: ''It has to happen. Work has to start now. Orlando Magazine looks forward to being a part of this thrilling encounter with the future.'' Column World looks forward to the idea being set adrift and having a thrilling encounter with the Bermuda Triangle.

Worldettes: The July Playboy centerfold is a waitress at Hooters. No, sorry, not the Hooters that just opened in Orlando, but the one in Clearwater, headquarters for the chain of nostalgia rock 'n' roll restaurants. But not to worry, all you droolers. Hooters plans to put Lynne Austin, a Plant City native, on tour.

The Harper's Index, a wry composite of meaningful statistics put out by Harper's magazine, has this to offer: 1. 11,000 people died from ''telephone- related'' injuries last year. (Sources tell me that was from talking on the phone during an electrical storm, not from coronaries suffered after being harassed by time-share condo salesmen.) And 2. There were 450,000 plastic, pink flamingos sold in the United States last year. There wasn't a breakdown for Florida, but you just know we have to be No. 1.

Eat Mo' items: The Sentinel, along with the wire services and other newspapers, has changed the way it spells the name of the Mad Dog of Libya. Used to be Khadafy, now it's Gadhafi. That's how Crazy Mo signed his name in a recent letter to some American schoolchildren. According to the Guardian newspaper in England, there were no fewer than 432 different ways to transliterate the name from Arabic. Column World has always preferred the spelling used by the Library of Congress -- Quadhdhafi. It emphasized that the man's a ''dhdh.'' That transliterates to dud.